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Meet the man who built a 22,000 CR baby care company. 1. Supam Maheshwari had become a father during his ed-tech startup, Brainvisa. He had to travel frequently to the United States and Europe. On the way back, he used to bring toys for his newborn daughter. After Brainvisa's acquisition, he began searching locally for toys, which frustrated him. 🤔 2. He didn't even have easy access to variety and good-quality products. The 50,000 CR Indian baby care products market remained unorganised, with 95% of sales offline. He wanted to revolutionise how parents shop for their children.🙌 3. Supam incorporated Brainbees solution to launch an online platform providing high-quality baby care and kids products. With his colleague Amitava Saha as co-founder and Rs 2.5 CR from friends and family, he took the first step. In September 2010, FirstCry was born. 🚀 4. Supam started with an inventory-based model, shipping products nationwide from its four warehouses in Pune, Delhi, Bangalore, and Kolkata. The idea lifted off as FirstCry scaled to 100 CR of Gross merchandise value (GMV) in 2011. But Supam knew that customer retention was key, so he came up with another idea. 👇 5. In 2011, he launched Goodlife, an online home and personal care product store. He also opened franchise-driven physical stores in tier 2 and 3 towns such as Bhilai, Dehradun, Haridwar and Bharuch. By 2013, FirstCry scaled to 250 CR GMV with 30% customer retention. ✅ 6. With stores touching profitability in three months, FirstCry had 100 stores, 600 brands and 25,000 products in 2014. Not losing focus on online sales, Supam launched his private labels BabyHug (apparel) and CuteWalk (footwear). FirstCry skyrocketed to 118.08 CR revenue by 2015. 📉 7. FirstCry had barely spent anything on marketing so Supam partnered with 6,000 hospitals to send a "FirstCry box" containing diapers, lotion, etc., from premium brands like Mamy Poko and Libero. The box was delivered to mothers on delivery. And the idea worked. 🙌 8. It delivered 2 lakh boxes and offered 90,000 items across 180 stores with in-depth product descriptions and online inventory status and order placement before a store visit. But the big news came On October 17, 2016.👇 9. FirstCry acquired its biggest competitor, Mahindra's retail 120-store franchise business, Babyoye, for 362.1 CR. It became FirstCry—A Mahindra FirstCry Venture. By 2019, it scaled to 283 stores and raised 1096.94 CR at a valuation of 6057.58 CR. 💰 10.By February 2021, it had expanded to 400 stores and scaled to a revenue of 1842.27 CR and a profit of 337.34 CR. It raised an additional 2120.5 CR from Tiger Global at a valuation of 8482 CR. FirstCry became the fourth Unicorn of 2021. 🦄 ➡️Today, FirstCry is a 22,400 CR company with over 5650 CR sales. 77% of its sales come online and it plans to list with an 1815 CR IPO soon. 💪 Supam Maheshwari still provides First Cry boxes—to 70,000 mothers monthly. 🙏